EP Infrastructure EUR 500mn 10-year bond

26. 2. 2021

On 23 February 2021, EP Infrastructure (“EPIF”, and together with its subsidiaries, the “EPIF Group”) rated BBB/Baa3/ BBB- by S&P, Moody’s and Fitch, respectively, priced a EUR 500m issuance of 1.816% Senior Notes due 2 March 2031 priced at MS + 180 bps or 1.816% yield.

Through this bond issuance, EPIF was able to benefit from the current favourable conditions in the international debt capital markets in order to extend its debt maturity profile and optimize the cost of its borrowings, while maintaining its conservative leverage ratio, which fully reflects the EPIF Group’s strategy. This transaction further raises EPIF profile in the international capital markets by providing a new liquid point to investors and extending its curve.

The transaction was multiple times oversubscribed, with a book peaking at EUR 2.7bn, highlighting the strong demand from new European Investment Grade investors in addition to demonstrating the support and high level of confidence from EPIF’s existing investor community.

This enabled EPIF to achieve very attractive terms. In comparison to EPIF’s theoretical fair value for a 10y tenor, this level represents a final new issue concession of negative 10 bps.

Václav Paleček, Finance Director of EPIF, commented that: “We extended our curve out to 10 years on very appealing terms. I am particularly pleased with a great granularity, volume and quality of our orderbook. Having issued a 10-year bond, we clearly communicate to our investor base a long-term commitment to the current portfolio of diversified assets in EPIF Group.”

Gary Mazzotti, Vice chairman of the Board of Directors of EPIF, in response to the results achieved commented that: “This highly successful outcome is a testament of the outstanding work done by the EPIF management team during numerous investor updates. I would like to thank all group employees and external advisors who enabled such a result”.

The new bond offering saw a high-quality and well-diversified investor demand, with 31% being allocated to German/Austrian investors, UK accounts taking up 12% of the final book, France – 7%, Spain/Portugal – 15%, Switzerland – 5%, Italy – 5%, Rest of Europe – 14% and Rest of World – 11%. Asset managers were allocated 67% of the final book, with Banks/Private Banks, Insurance/Pension Funds and Hedge Funds/Others taking up the rest (17%, 13%, and 3%, respectively).

Citi, HSBC, IMI – Intesa Sanpaolo, SMBC Nikko and UniCredit were the Joint Bookrunners on the transaction.

About EP Infrastructure

The EPIF Group is a European energy infrastructure utility focused on gas transmission, gas and power distribution, heat and power generation and gas storage. With principal operations in the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic, the EPIF Group is a unique European entity with a large and diversified portfolio of strategically important infrastructure assets. Measured by EBITDA, the EPIF Group believes it is among the five largest industrial groups based in the Czech Republic.

The EPIF Group highlights:

• The EPIF Group holds approximately a 49 per cent. stake in, and has management control over, Eustream. The transmission network of Eustream is part of the Central Corridor which is the largest and the most important piped gas corridor for deliveries of Russian gas to Western, Central and Southern Europe.
• The EPIF Group is an important gas and electricity distributor in the Slovak Republic and is the leading distributor of heat to final consumers in the Czech Republic.
• The EPIF Group holds the largest gas storage capacity in the region of Slovakia, Czech Republic and Austria.

Disclaimer:

This communication is not an offer of securities.

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